DESIGN OPPORTUNITY

For a long time, Fitbit only offered highly competitive, social challenges to users in the app. However, there was a huge amount of users who were turned off by competition and sharing their activity data with friends. I was tasked to design a new type of challenge that would appeal to people looking to stay motivated in hitting their goals without the mechanics of competition and social accountability.

At the end of the day, my fitness journey is personal. I’m not trying to beat anyone else, I’m just trying to improve myself.

— Design Persona

DESIGN CHALLENGE

How might we create a compelling Challenge for single users to help stay motivated & encouraged to hit their goals each day?

PROCESS

After gathering data and insights around opportunities, the team began designing one of the most blue-sky, ambitious projects the company had ever seen. We worked with adventure photographer, Chris Burkard, in producing the immersive & compelling experiences to inspire millions of people around the world. Please contact me if you'd like to hear more about my design process for this project.

DESIGN SOLUTION

We launched Adventures last Fall into our Challenges offerings and people fell in love! Adventures enabled people to digitally conquer the outdoors, inspiring them to reach new heights they never thought was possible before.

PROGRESS REVAMP

Research and community boards informed us that people were eager to view their activity data in a new way, aside from the Fitbit Dashboard. Users were also ready for a new type of Challenge since there hadn't been an update in a long while.

As steps sync from their fitness trackers, users can watch their avatars advance through the trail, uncovering rewards along the way.

DYNAMIC GOALS

Each morning users receive a Daily Destination– a point on the path to reach based on their seven-day averages. The Daily Destination is responsive to users behaviors by dialing it back when they’ve hit a rough patch, and dialing it up when they’ve been crushing their step goals.

The objective is to help increase users’ overall step averages upon completion of an Adventure.

TREASURE OBSESSIONS

In Adventures, it’s about the journey, not only about the destination. Like in real life, if we speed through and never stop to smell the roses, we miss out on incredible moments.

We’ve created an analogous experience to make each adventure feel unique using elusive Treasures found off path. They are filled with random fun facts, quizzes, mini-workouts and reminders to stay fueled with food and water.

When users collect all the treasures within a trail, they are rewarded the trickiest of all badges– the Treasure Hunter Badge.

IMMERSIVE ACHIEVEMENTS

Along the path there are beautiful panoramic photos of landmarks to unlock. Users can pan their phones for a virtual reality experience– immersing themselves into the Adventure as if they were really there, without having to leave their homes or offices.

REWARDING RESULTS

Studies show people are highly motivated by the prospects of completing collections, collecting rewards, and being acknowledged in their accomplishments.

We extended Fitbit’s Badge model to reward each user with a trail specific badge upon completion.

HEALTH IMPACTS

The response from users was incredibly positive! We saw users step two times more than users who did not participate in any challenges.

This was a huge win. The designed mechanic was working to not only keep people motivated and engaged, but also inspire a sense of exploration in conquering obstacles in real life.

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BUILT FOR MORE

The Adventures framework was carefully designed and architected to swap content and create new adventures easily and quickly.

We released the New York Marathon Series one month after our first Yosemite launch. Users blew through the content, and everyone is eager for more Adventure locations.

NEXT STEPS

Due to the popularity of these new types of Challenges, the team continued exploring what the next types of Challenges could be using the Adventures framework.

Adventures appealed to not only solo, non-competitive type users, but were also widely enjoyed and consumed by competitive, social types of users. The number one feature request was to “do an Adventure with friends.” Project page for Adventure Races coming soon!